In order to have the show obtain the best acts possible it was necessary to host the show in New York, L.A. and London. With four days notice the show in London was conceived, designed and realised with the generous help of the production industries.
Tim Routledge, lighting and set designer for the event was contacted by Dionne Orrom of Serpent Productions who was co-producing the event with Ned O'Hanlon on behalf of MTV. The show held at the Hospital Studios in Central London featured Coldplay, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Rhianna, Bono and the Edge from U2.
"We had a design brief from the States so that the three shows tied together with some cohesion but apart from that we took the show and ran with it at full pace for four days to make it happen" said Routledge.
Routledge approached four companies to assist with the show and all those contacted responded quickly and provided their total support. Panalux and Stage Electrics provided the lighting equipment required including a large number of oversized lightbulb pendants and Stagebars from Panalux amongst other equipment and Alpha Beam 700's and a large number of low voltage fittings from Stage Electrics.
John Wallace, live events operations manager at Stage Electrics commented: "We were only too pleased to be able to do our bit to help out on this event. Stage Electrics was able to respond at short notice along with other industry players to provide equipment and support to this important cause, we were glad to be part of the fundraising effort."
The set also featured five columns of high-res LED screen supplied and installed by Chris Ferrante at XL Video. The video content for the show was created in L.A. and sent over on the day of the show and was played back on MA Lighting's new VPU media server supplied and looked after by the company's own Philip Norfolk and Callum Howie who also kindly supplied other control ancillary equipment.
The consoles for the show were donated by grandPA. "MA are always keen to help out clients with show support and we were eager to do everything we could to support the efforts of those in the Hope For Haiti Now campaign."
In order to get everything in to the studio in time and ready for the first band a number of crew were required and Tim approached PRG to assist with approaching crew as volunteers. PRG's Gordon Torrington rose to the challenge as chief LX and rallied a large number of crew together for the mammoth day onsite.
Routledge comments: "I can't thank everyone involved, everybody was extremely positive in wanting to help and with too many individuals to mention, they all know who they are and what a difference they have helped to make. The show looked amazing and really captured the spirit of the cause.
"All of the music on the night has been mixed live for download on itunes and to help raise the total please go online and buy some of these unique tracks."
(Jim Evans)
